September 2008

Many business and industry groups are interested in the development of public policy.

Heather recently spoke to Brad Hinton, former senior research specialist at Parliamentary Library on his tips for finding policy information.

For finding Australian Government policy information, Brad recommends:

• Start with searching the information that is available on government websites.

Australia.gov.au is the starting point for linking to Australian federal government agencies and websites, directories of contacts, government publications, and state and territory governments.

The National Library of Australia Pandora Archive [http://pandora.nla.gov.au] is the official repository for Australian web archived material for government sites.

• Look at Government media statements for policy announcements.
• Check press coverage for from news archive services, such as newstext.com.au, or news aggregators, such as Factiva or LexisNexis for analysis of policy developments.
• Where necessary, verify or expand on the information by checking with experts in various government departments or agencies and industry bodies.
• Australian Policy Online [http://www.apo.org.au] is a useful source for staying in touch with policy discussion led byAustralia’s Social and Policy Research institutions.

This month’s tip is an extract from Heather’s recent article “searching for Australian content:  industries, companies, people and government”, Searcher, May 2008.  http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/may08/Carine.shtml